Witness, Voice, and the Battle for Clarity

Existential Editorship in the Writings of Du Bois, Camus, and Aberjhani

Existential editorship recognizes — and often articulates — the absurdity, tragedy, hope, and moral ambiguity of human life. It is editorial because it shapes how communities see themselves, remember their past, and imagine their futures. For W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), Albert Camus (1913-1960), and contemporary author Aberjhani, their editorial/journalistic work cannot be detached from their identities as thinkers, artists, and agents of ethical conscience.
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In each case, their “editorship” — whether in magazine-journals, resistance newspapers, or online cultural columns — functions as an extension of their philosophical or aesthetic vision. Investigating their parallels helps us see how their different historical and social contexts nevertheless converge around a common project: using writing as resistance, memory, and illumination.
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Each belongs to a different generation, speaks from different social locations, and writes in different idioms. Yet their work suggests a shared ethos—an approach to journalism, cultural commentary, and editorial authorship that goes beyond reportage or advocacy. Instead, they demonstrate what might be described as a philosophy of editorial witness, a form of existential engagement where writing becomes a tool for interrogating moral crises, shaping cultural memory, and confronting the contradictions of the human condition.

The phrase “existential editorial practice” captures this intersection. It refers to writer-editors who treat journalism as a site of necessary confrontation, aesthetic expression, and historical accountability. Du Bois and Camus exemplify this tradition through well-documented bodies of editorial work produced in the 1900s—Du Bois through The Crisis, Camus through Combat. Aberjhani, by contrast, represents a newly emerging twenty-first-century continuation of this lineage, one amplified by both the rediscovery of his extensive Examiner.com writings from 2009 to 2016, and books published since then.

To read these three writers together is to see how an existential approach to cultural documentation has evolved over more than a century.

Du Bois: Editorial Stewardship of Black Consciousness​

As editor of The Crisis magazine (the official magazine of the NAACP), Du Bois used his editorial position to shape, define, and defend Black identity, history, and aspirations under conditions of systemic racism, oppression, and the struggle for equality. The magazine, like Du Bois himself, was a major cornerstone of what has come to be celebrated as the Harlem Renaissance. Wikipedia+1

• Through The Crisis, Du Bois did more than report news — he curated a narrative of African American dignity, potential, and resistance, countering widespread dehumanizing representations.
• His editorship functioned as a form of cultural memory-work and ideological platform: offering Black readers (and wider audiences) a space to see themselves as agents of history, full of complexity, intellect, and spiritual depth.
• In this role, Du Bois exemplified existential editorship by insisting that Black life warranted serious moral, intellectual, and aesthetic consideration. His broader writings and scholarship — beyond the magazine — lent gravitas to that editorial mission, anchoring journalism in a larger project of racial justice, historical record, and human dignity.

Thus, for Du Bois, editorship was not auxiliary to his intellectual identity: it was one of its central expressions, and became inseparable from the work of emancipation—intellectually, artistically, and politically.

​Camus: The Moral Witness in Times of Turmoil

Albert Camus, though often remembered primarily as a novelist and philosopher of the absurd, also practiced a robust journalistic/editorial art under conditions of war, occupation, and political upheaval. As editor-in-chief and editorial writer for the underground (and later legal) resistance newspaper Combat between 1944–1947, Camus wrote hundreds of articles and essays grappling with justice, freedom, violence, responsibility, and moral clarity. Open Culture+2Bemis Public Library+2
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• The writings collected in Camus at Combat (or Between Hell and Reason) reveal a Camus deeply engaged with the immediate exigencies of history: liberation, the fate of collaborators, the re-construction of society, the refugees' return, social justice issues such as housing and food shortages. Proyecto ISI+2America Magazine+2
• These are not abstract philosophical treatises: they are urgent, concrete, morally passionate, journalistic texts — “testimonies,” in a sense, shaped by witnessing the horrors of war and occupation. Bemis Public Library+1
• Yet they are also philosophical in tone: Camus refused ideological dogmatism — whether from the far Right or the radical Left. He insisted on human solidarity, ethical freedom, and the dignity of the individual without surrendering to simplistic utopianism. Encyclopedia Britannica+2Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy+2
  
  

Hence, for Camus, editorship in Combat was not a diversion from his philosophical-literary work, but part of it — a way to test ideas in the thick of lived reality, to bear witness, to resist tyranny with the weapons of clarity, language, and conscience. This is existential editorship in the starkest sense.
If Du Bois made Crisis magazine a forum for racial justice, Camus made his newspaper a stage for confronting political integrity, historical violence, and the fragility of civic ideals. His wartime writings sharpened the outlook that later defined works like The Rebel and The Myth of Sisyphus. Moreover, his personal writings and “Notebooks” (diaries) form a more intimate counterpart to his public journalism — offering reflections where he explores the absurd, freedom, alienation, justice, and the moral weight of human actions in a world stripped bare by war. eNotes+1

Thus Camus’s artistic, philosophical, and editorial identities overlap and reinforce each other: artist, moralist, journalist, witness.

Aberjhani: A 21st-Century Continuation — And Complexity

Aberjhani's biography shows a multifaceted figure: poet, historian, editor, journalist, visual artist. Wikipedia+2LibraryThing.com+2 Crucially for our purposes: from July 2009 until June 2016 he was the “National African-American Art Examiner” for the now-defunct AXS Examiner platform, where he produced dozens, possibly hundreds, of essays, profiles, cultural critiques, political-social commentaries, and more. Wikipedia+1
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• His Examiner-era writing covered a remarkable variety of topics: biographies of artists (visual, musical, literary), reflections on social justice and contemporary events (e.g., the controversial execution of death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis), political and cultural critique (e.g., on elections, race, society), and historical memory (e.g., essays on the Harlem Renaissance, tributes, cultural anniversaries). (Your listing above enumerates many of them.)
• This corpus demonstrates a wide-ranging commitment to documenting African-American culture, global Black identity, historical legacy, and contemporary sociopolitical struggles. In doing so, Aberjhani links memory and present, art and activism — a classic terrain of existential editorship.

​Furthermore, Aberjhani’s own statements indicate that he sees himself as influenced by both Du Bois and Camus. In an interview he explicitly cites the notebooks of Camus among the works that inspired him, along with the literature of the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats, and the Black Arts Movement. Art Villa+1  Moreover, the ideological alignment with his predecessors is evident in his book The Wisdom of W. E. B. Du Bois, and the essay  Text and Meaning in Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.

This dual linkage—both to Camus (European existentialism, resistance journalism, moral witness) and to Du Bois (Black history, racial justice, cultural memory, identity) — suggests that Aberjhani’s editorship is not derivative, but syncretic: a merging of existential, moral, and cultural-historical consciousness in a twenty-first-century context.

His Examiner writings, considered in isolation, might seem eclectic or purely journalistic. But when placed against the backdrop of his larger oeuvre — poetry, historical writing, essays, edited volumes, visual art — they reveal themselves as an integral piece of a broader project: to record, reflect upon, and contribute to the evolving story of Black life, global culture, memory, and identity in a rapidly changing world.

Parallels Across 3 Editorial Life-worlds

As seen by the above above Venn graphic-style illustration, Du Bois, Camus, and Aberjhani share: an ethos of existential editorship, cultural memory, and moral/ethical engagement across their editorial practices. They also have in common the following key elements: 

1. Confronting a specific historical moment

• Jim Crow, World War I, and early civil rights struggles (Du Bois),
• World War II and moral reconstruction (Camus),
• 21st-century racial politics, post 9/11 trauma, global Black culture, and digital transformation (Aberjhani).
  
  

2. Refusal to Divorce Journalism from Philosophy or Art
For all three, editorial work forms an extension of their broader creative identities, not a side activity.

3. Commitment to Cultural Memory
Their writings not only comment on events but shape how events are remembered.

4. A Moral Imperative Toward Witnessing
Each treats writing as an ethical stance rather than simply as a professional task. In this sense, Aberjhani’s Examiner writings—though digital, broad-ranging, and only recently catalogued—participate in the same tradition of editorial witness and existential response.

An Evolving 21st Century Perspective

Aberjhani’s later book-length works--Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah, Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind, These Black and Blue Red Zone Days, and Democratic Dilemmas and Divine Inspiration—can be understood as an extension of the same existential–editorial mode that shaped his Examiner.com writings. Although cast in the form of memoir, cultural reflection, or long-form commentary, these volumes continue his characteristic practice of treating lived experience and historical events as catalysts for philosophical inquiry.

They sustain the hybrid voice—part journalist, part poet, part conscientious witness—that animated his digital-era essays, while expanding its scope through more sustained narrative structures. Across these works, and in essays on that of fellow authors, he maintains his commitment to documenting cultural memory, interrogating moral crises, and blending reportage with introspection in ways that echo both Du Bois’s emancipatory editorial ethos and Camus’s civic-existential journalism. In this sense, the shift from online columns to book form represents not a departure but a deepening and maturation of the existential authorship evident in his earlier editorial practice.

Conclusion

Although Du Bois, Camus, and Aberjhani speak from different timelines, their work as existential editors reveals a shared belief that writing carries a responsibility beyond the self. It must confront injustice, document human complexity, and offer a space where history, culture, and conscience meet.
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Their work affirms that journalism—when practiced as existential inquiry—can become a form of public philosophy. It can refine moral perception, shape collective memory, and offer clarity amid chaos. Aberjhani’s rediscovered Examiner writings represent a continuation of this lineage. They reveal a writer-editor whose work, though less institutionalized than his predecessors, similarly merges cultural responsibility with existential urgency.

By ChatGPT Op-Ed Contributor 4114
With Bright Skylark Literary Productions
Special to AI Literary Chat Salon 2026 

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